Relived Memories
by Ai No Senshi
Summary: Darien's world lurched into motion and he began spinning faster and faster. His mind was dizzy and he couldn't make a single rational thought. The spinning stopped and he opened his eyes. What he saw he could never forget, but already had once.
1. Mommy?

Serena clutched the phone, her knuckles white. She was frozen straight to her heart, which had stopped seconds ago. She was struck speechless, and the silence of her empty home rushed in to meet her. A trail was left by the tear that had dropped from her eye.  
  
"Miss Tsukino?"  
  
"I... I'm here."  
  
"Miss Tsukino, do you need someone to come get you? We'll send someone if you don't think you can drive here."  
  
"No, no I'm fine. I'll be there soon."  
  
"Okay, Miss Tsukino."  
  
Serena hung up the phone and picked up her keys. She moved robotically to slip on her coat and wrap her scarf around her neck. She turned off the lights and locked the door. Nothing would seem to be different to anyone else. Inside Serena was falling to peices.  
  
The rain matched her mood as she made her way to the hospital. The nurse's words echoed through her mind.  
  
"Is this Miss Serena Tsukino?"  
  
"Yes, it is."  
  
"Miss Tsukino, I'm calling from Angels of Hope Hospital. It's about your fiance, Darien Shields."  
  
Stop it Serena! she thought. This won't help at all. Darien is fine, he'll be just fine. Nothing is wrong.  
  
But she knew she was lying to herself. She started to pass Oak and Green street and slowed to a crawl. A policemen was directing traffic past a wreck. Darien's wreck.  
  
Serena saw Darien's black car twisted into an impossible pretzel. The jaws of life had been used to cut him free. She started sobbing uncontrollably. There was another car, not nearly as smashed as Darien's, sitting by the fire truck. In the back of an ambulance set it's driver, wrapped in a blanket, with no more than what Serena guessed a concussion and broken arm. He was yet to go to the hospital.  
  
Serena was waved through and she headed ever closer to the hospital. She heard the rest of the nurse's conversation.  
  
"He was in a car accident, and your listed in hospital records as his only family. He's in bad shape, Miss Tsukino."  
  
"How bad?" Serena had managed.  
  
"Very bad. I think you need to get here Miss Tsukino, and soon."  
  
That was the point Serena had gone silent. Too shocked, too scared, and too worried to speak. She started praying as she pulled into the hospital parking lot. When she walked into the hospital she gagged. The desperation around her was too much.  
  
"Are you Miss Tsukino?" A short nurse asked her.  
  
Serena nodded in a hypnotic way.  
  
The nurse put her hand on Serena's shoulder. "This way."  
  
Serena followed her into the Intesive Care unit of the hospital. The nurse stopped by what looked like a bed attached to millions of tubes and wires. Serena could barely see Darien under it all, but she knew it was him.  
  
"Darien," she said, her knees buckling. The nurse slipped a chair underneath her. "Oh my God. I didn't imagine anything so bad."  
  
A doctor came in and Serena stood up to meet him.  
  
"My name is Dr. Morrison."  
  
Serena shook his hand and sat back down.  
  
"Miss Tsukino, Darien is... well he might be dying."  
  
"Dying?"  
  
"There was severe head trauma that has left him in a coma. All of his ribs are broken, but luckily his spinal chord was untouched. It is very possible that he'll wake up and we'll be able to set his bones and heal him right up. But it is also very possible, that he never wakes up at all."  
  
"Oh Darien!" Serena sobbed. "You can't leave me!"  
  
Darien  
  
Darien was lost. There had been a crash and after that black. Now he felt like he was just falling and falling. He couldn't see a thing at all.  
  
"You can't leave me!" A voice screamed.  
  
He looked everywhere. "Serena?! Serena where are you?"  
  
"Don't leave Darien," Serena's voice came again in a whisper.  
  
"I'm not leaving!" Darien yelled.  
  
He jerked to a stop and was lying somewhere. He couldn't feel any part of his body at all. And still only black filled his vision. Then a women's face appeared, a very familiar face, yet he couldn't quite place it.  
  
"Who are you?"  
  
The woman smiled. Her eyes were red and sparkling and her hair was pink. A man joined her. His hair was ebony and his eyes dark blue. They smiled down at him.  
  
"Mom?" Darien asked. And the world spun into motion.  
  
He stopped spinning and opened his eyes.  
  
"Finally, sleepyhead," a gentle and smooth voice said. "Were you ever going to get up?"  
  
"Where am I?" Darien said, but his voice was not the same deep voice of a man, but a small voice of a boy. He eyed the room with light blue walls covered in pennants and pictures of his baseball heroes. He looked up at the pink-haired woman who laughed.  
  
"You're in your room, sweetie. You better get up, or you're dad will eat all the blueberry pancakes I made."  
  
Darien scooted out of his bed and found out he was wearing superman pajamas. He followed his mother into kitchen filled with the smell of blueberries and and sunlight. His father was sitting at the table with coffee.  
  
"It's about time you got up, you lazy kid," he said merrily. He motioned towards a pile of pancakes. "Now whaddaya say we demolish this nice stack of pancakes you're Mom made?"  
  
Darien smiled and jumped into his seat. He ate every single of the light feathery pancakes his mother put in front of him.  
  
"You want to go for a drive later?" His father asked.  
  
Darien nodded, mouth covered in syrup.  
  
"Maybe we'll see all those horses, Darien," his mother said. She brushed back his hair. "But we've got to clean you up first."  
  
She took him into the bathroom and helped him get all the sticky syrup from his hands and face. Then shooed him into his room to get dressed. He slipped on his blue cudoroy overalls, and red baseball t-shirt. He put on his blue baseball cap and smiled big as he scooted into his car seat.  
  
"Are you ready?" His dad said.  
  
"Yeah!" Darien yelled back. The car lurched into motion and the countryside starting streaking by. The trees were multi-colored golden, orange, and red. He did get to see the horses. The ones his father called thorough breeds.  
  
"You see all the horses, Dare?"  
  
"Yeah, mommy!"  
  
His mother smiled and turned back around. Darien watched in horror as her face changed. Her eyes grew wide and her mouth formed an O and let out a scream.  
  
"Watch out!"  
  
His father grew tense and swerved. The went out of control and his mother's peircing scream filled Darien's ears. They broke through the guardrail and went over the side of the hill. When the car finally stopped falling, his mother and father's heads hit the front of the car. Glass broke and flames came from the engine.  
  
Darien watched through the fumes as his mother and father bled.  
  
"Mommy! Daddy!" They didn't move. Darien coughed and coughed until the blackness started to return.  
  
"Darien!" A voice called. There was a silver light that broke through the darkness and someone warm scooped him from the car. They laid him far away from the flames and brushed his hair back.  
  
"I'm so sorry, sweetie," a far away voice said. "We didn't want to leave you alone, but fate had it's own plans."  
  
Darien squinted and saw long pink hair slowly vanish.  
  
"Mommy!" he coughed. "Mommy!" And the blackness overwhelmed him again.  
  
Author's Note: Not your average Darien-in-a-coma fic is it? I try to be original. Please review. I've got so many ideas for this fic, it's amazing! 


	2. First Meeting

Serena closed her eyes, but never stopped listening to the beep of the heart monitor. Praying to God that it wouldn't stop.  
  
Serena held his hand and prayed. "God, please. I know that I'm not the best of people, but don't let him leave me."  
  
She felt Darien's hand tense and she flung open her eyes. He was still sleeping and his hand returned to normal, but she took it as a sign. He'd be back to her. Someday, he'd return.  
  
The scouts watched Serena from the clear window. They weren't allowed in, but they had Kleenexes outside. They cried and prayed like Serena. Destiny depended on Darien's return.  
  
Darien had just remembered the day his parent's had died. Inside he was crying. His whole life had been lonely until... Until Serena.  
  
The world lurched into a motion again and he was flung into another memory of long ago in an hospital.  
  
Darien sat crying on his bed. Another one of his friends was leaving him. He was all alone in this world at the age of six. He'd learned the way of life already. He wouldn't attach himself to anyone ever again. It was a new rule for survival. If you didn't feel love, you couldn't feel sad.  
  
"What's wrong?" a small voice said.  
  
Darien looked up to see a small blonde girl with the weirdest hairstyle he'd ever seen. He rubbed his nose on his shirt sleeve and sniffled.  
  
"Nothin's wrong."  
  
"But you're crying."  
  
"So?"  
  
"So you have to be sad."  
  
"Maybe I am."  
  
The little girl scooted up onto the bed next to him. She handed him a rose. "For you."  
  
He took the rose. "Thank you."  
  
She smiled and he couldn't help, but return it. For the first time in a long time he didn't feel completely and utterly sad. The loss in his life still hung over him, but for this brief second he was happy. This girl was a ray of sunshine in the darkness he was lost in.  
  
"Serena?" a voice called. A man appeared in the doorway. "Oh hello."  
  
"Hello," Darien said.  
  
"Who's this?" he asked Serena.  
  
"Umm..."  
  
"I'm Darien, sir."  
  
"Well Darien, I guess can let Serena stay with you awhile, but will you make sure she gets to her mother's room soon."  
  
"Yes, sir."  
  
The man nodded and disappeared.  
  
Serena picked up a ball that was sitting in the corner and bounced it towards Darien. He caught it and bounced it back. They continued to do so in a rythym of bounces, and a melody of laughter. A nurse came in and told Serena she had to go.  
  
"I'll visit you again," Serena said as she left.  
  
Darien waved as she disappeared.  
  
She never visited him again and Darien's life plunged deeper into the darkness. He started to forget about the blonde girl and only remembered sadness as he got flung into home after home. Until he turned sixteen and was released. He made a life on his own, living on government money, until he got a job and met a girl. A girl with blonde hair.  
  
Serena had fallen asleep. She hadn't meant to, but she'd been up for almost twenty hours with only three cups of coffee. She snapped her eyes open quickly when she realized the sound that had woken her up was Darien's heart monitor. It was stuck on one long continuous bleep.  
  
She stood up and pressed the nurse call button. She grabbed Darien's hand.  
  
"No, don't do this Darien! Don't leave me!"  
  
The doctors rushed in and an nurse had pull Serena away. Her fingers clung to Darien's clammy ones.  
  
"No! Darien!" she shrieked. No one saw the silver sparks that came from her fingers and wrapped around Darien's hand. "Please don't leave!"  
  
They got her out of the room and closed the door. The scouts all quickly stood around her and held her shoulders. She pressed her hands against the glass and watched the doctors do CPR and manually make Darien breath. She watched them try and shock his heart back into beating. She watched through tears as the nurse shook her head slowly back and forth.  
  
"No!!!" she yelled as they started for the door. "No!"  
  
Author's Note: Maybe it's a little short, and I know it took a long to update, but I was working on A Slave of His Heart so much I almost forgot this one. Please review if you want to read more. 


	3. Blonde in the Arcade

Darien felt strange. Instead of falling into darkness he was floating towards this great light.  
  
"What's happening?" he asked. His voice bounced off walls and echoed back at him.  
  
"Don't leave me!" he heard again. Serena's voice was desperate. He looked back down where another light was glowing. This one was smaller and silver. He started swimming towards it. It was warmer down there, less welcoming, but warmer. He swam closer and closer and found out that the light was coming from a small tear in the lining of darkness. He stuck both hands in it and ripped the dark cloth back. The warm silver light filled the tunnel around him and warmed his body.  
  
+++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
All the doctors and nurses turned around to look at the heart monitor which had started beeping again. They checked all his vital signs and let Serena back in. She grabbed Darien's hand and kissed his lips. "I knew you wouldn't leave me," she said. Her teardrops fell onto his pale skin and left their own soft trails.  
  
+++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  
Darien heard her whisper and his world spun again. Not another memory, he thought. But he couldn't avoid these, no matter how hard he tried.  
  
He was sixteen again and had just gotten his license. He felt important being able to drive a fast car, but lonely at the same time because he had no one to drive around. He walked sullenly down the street this morning, his hands deep in his pockets, his feet scuffing the sidewalk every once in awhile. It was a surprise when he found himself standing in front of an arcade. The Crown.  
  
He stepped in and saw all sorts of teens hanging out, playing games, and eating ice cream. He went to the counter and sat down, feeling even more alone.  
  
"What will it be?" A blonde headed boy asked him.  
  
"I don't know. A coke?"  
  
"Coming right up," the blonde said and went to fill a glass. This gave Darien time to survey the room. Two girls sat at a table near the window laughing and having milkshakes. One was a red head with a rather loud voice, and the other... the other took his breath away.  
  
She was blonde and her hair was up in a strange, but familiar, hairstyle. She was naturally beautiful and her blue eyes were sparkling. He was amazed at that moment that such beauty existed in this world still and he suddenly believed in miracles.  
  
"Hey! Woohoo! Earth to... whoever you are!" the blonde boy said.  
  
Darien spun around to face him, and blushed realizing he'd been staring.  
  
"So you like Serena, huh?" he said with a cheshire grin. "You better lay off buddy, Serena's like a sister to me and if you do anything to hurt her..."  
  
"You don't have to worry about that," Darien said. "I don't even know her."  
  
Inside, though, Darien thought he did know this girl. Serena, was her name. But why did his mind insist her name was Serenity, not Serena? He didn't know.  
  
"Andrew!" Serena said coming up to the counter. "I spilled my shake again."  
  
"Oh geez," Andrew said and grabbed a rag from the back sink. "Here we go again."  
  
"Sorry!" Serena insisted, and her eyes fell upon Darien for the first time. She smiled. "Hi."  
  
"Hello."  
  
"I'm Serena," she said sticking her hand out. He shook it.  
  
"I'm Darien."  
  
"Nice to meet you," she said and then hurried over to help Andrew.  
  
That evening when Darien left he made a vow to come back to that place. There was something special about the people he'd met. Something important. And he returned many, many, times.  
  
Darien spun away from the memory and back into the floating state he was in. He remained in the warm silver light, the darkness banished away. He felt comforted there, like nothing could ever hurt him. He curled into a ball and waited for Serena's voice, and the next memory.  
  
Author's Note: Wow! Aren't you proud of me? I actually updated a story! It's kinda short, but oh well. Please review and I'll work hard to get the next chappie up on... well, any story!  
  
Until the next time,  
  
Ai No Senshi 


End file.
